In My Own Eyes
by YoungWriter11
Summary: It's been 15 years since Rachel and the members of Glee club graduated from school and Rachel's life has taken a dark turn. This is a series of letters written between two old flames, Rachel and Finn.
1. You Are Ready

Depression is a funny thing. I could be the envy of a thousand people's eyes, but in my own eyes, I am nothing.

xxx

**Letter No: **One**  
****Date: **November 17th

_To Dear Finn, _

_I know, we haven't talked in a long time, I rarely go on my email anymore... sometimes it's just easier to stay away from everyone and everything. I have been feeling better, well better than before at least. I know the last time we talked it got complicated, I wanted to tell you about my suicide attempt but it's hard for me. I've given it time and it's something I want you to know, because I care about you. There's a lot about myself that I kept out of our emails all these years, mostly because it's dark but I think you're ready to hear it._

_It's hard to describe, but I've had depression for about 4 years now, it started after Shelby died, I'd come to love her and it was just as I was getting to appreciate her as my mother she was taken from me. My reaction to her death was not normal, I became secluded, I stopped going out, and I ended up burning a lot of my friendships. I was taken to a physiatrist, there they put me on medication and you know for about a year I was actually okay or semi-okay. But it's like there's this thing inside me that says oh look Rachel's getting happy again we better put an end to it. _

_I loved James, I loved him so much, but he could never love me enough to not kill himself. But you already know that story. I guess I've never been the same person. How I feel most of the time now is complicated. I would say that about 40% of the time I'm just me my normal self. But it's like I have these phases where I am completely emotionless, and I can't feel anything; nothing at all I'm not happy or sad, or angry, or lonely, there is just nothing, and everything around me feels dormant. It's like I want to feel upset and angry but I can't and it feels as if my life is pointless. _

_Sometimes these phases last a few days sometimes weeks. When I come out of the phases I'm a complete wreck, I cry uncontrollably, I'm incredibly angry and self harmful. It's like I'm angry at having not been able to feel. After I come out of one of these phases I'm often sent to hospital. So then after about a week I'll start to become less angry and upset and slowly I start to feel better, but I always know that there's only a matter of time before it happens again. It's during this time that I often feel depressed and feeling like I want to end._

_It's like every single medication I've been put on has made me feel less depressed but it has never stopped one of these phases, and no one ever knows how they happen or why. And it scares me, because I don't know what's wrong with me, I stop feeling like myself, and I can't be normal anymore. _

_I know you want to see me again, I'm not sure now is the right time, unless you're prepared to see this thing that I have now become._

_- Rachel._

_

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**Tell me your thoughts!**

**E.**


	2. Help

**Wow - I have to say I was honestly suprised at all the messages/reviews/subscribers I got from this story. When I wrote the last chapter, it was mostly written when I was in a state of depression myself, and I'm one of those people who like to write down their thoughts, I wasn't particularly expecting many to read or enjoy it. So i decided that I might make this a multi-chapter. **

**The Chapters will not be as long as my other stories, as each will mainly consist of a letter. **

**Thanks for all your words, and I hope you enjoy!**

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He didn't know how he was to respond. Everything he thought he knew about this woman over the past 4 years was not real. How could that possibly be, the two of them shared everything. He had told he all his marriage problems, and he'd told her, his true emotions after his mother's death. Something that had been hard for him to do, as no one had known the incredibly close bond he had, had with his dearly treasured mother. This was something he had not done with anyone else, not even his wife. How could she have not once mentioned her depression, her anxiety over her mother's death, and how rough it had been for her after James died.

He wanted to be angry at her for deceiving him, but the truth was he could never be angry at Rachel. He would never hate her, he would never ignore her in her time of need, and he would always hold an immensely great care for her.

Finn was no doctor, but from what Rachel had written she sounded like she had bi-polar. This was not good, what had happened to the Rachel he knew.

xxx

**Letter No: **Two  
**Date: **November 20th

_Rachel,_

_I only wish I had of known. You say that you think I'm ready to hear it _now,_ but it upsets me to think that you don't realise that I would always be ready when it concerns you. I thought our history alone was proof of that. It cuts me to my core that you were unable to confide in me, and it almost makes me feel like this friendship that we have had is not real, because everything you shared with me was not the whole truth. You think I would not what to see what you have become, but that just shows you have no idea how much I care for you – I will be there for you through anything._

_I do understand though, and I do not blame you. I apologize for my reaction to finding out about your suicide attempt, anything I said in our last conversation is something I wish to take back, and I hope you can cast it out of thought. I think that if I had of heard it from you I would not have been as angry. The mere thought of you not existing revolted me, the idea that you would take your life yourself was in comprehendible. Especially since I thought I knew mostly everything about you._

_I was sorry to hear of Shelby's death, I guess I would have given you more support if I'd understood how much she meant to you. As for James, he did love you Rach, he loved you immensely, he loved you just as much if not more than you loved him. He had depression Rach, he wasn't thinking rationally, I think you can understand how that feels... don't ever let yourself think that he didn't stay around for you because he didn't love you enough. He did._

_I believed he did, if I hadn't believed how greatly he loved you, you know I would have pursued our relationship. I could see it was hurting you to choose between us, but Rach you could never love me as much as I loved you, and I would never love you as much as James loved you. I know it was for the best, I will always love you Rachel but I _am_ happy being married to Janine – I wish you could meet her. She's different to you in so many ways, but she has the same confidence and ambition as you. Even though you may feel as though you have lost those qualities, they are still there Rach, you will find them again one day, and no matter what you think you have become you will always be Rachel Berry, and you are going to get back your flame. _

_Rach, I want to help you in any way I can, just tell me what you need. If you need a shoulder to cry on - use mine, if you need someone to talk to - talk to me, if you need someone to take you to the hospital or anywhere you need to go for help – I will take you, if you need someone to just sit with you when you're lonely– I will sit with you, there is nothing I wouldn't do. But I can't help you unless you let me._

_- Finn._

xxx

It was not until he had pressed _send_ that he noticed the tear that had slipped from his eye.

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**Please review, and tell me your thoughts!**

**Also - If there are any blog followers out there, my blog is http:/somethingkindofwonderful(dot)tumblr(dot)com/ - it is also my homepage tab on my Fanfic profile. It's mostly random thought drabbles.**

**E.**


	3. Dust and Sin

**Thanks again to everyone's support!**

**This Chapter is a little different in terms of style. I plan to write in a range of styles throughout this story. **

**Enjoy!**

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"_Love bade me welcome: yet my sound drew back,  
Guilty of dust and sin." – George Herbert._

xxx

'When we have passed a certain age, the soul of the child that we were, and the souls of the dead from whom we spring, come and bestow upon us a in handfuls their reassures and their calamities.'

The realization that I had reached this age came upon me one night in winter. It was after midnight, and I was driving through pouring rain from a dinner party uptown, up to my home in the country thirty miles from the city. My thoughts were accompanied by the dreary whining of the wind-screen wiper, and occasionally and dangerously interrupted by the blinding lights of a timber lorry, driven presumably by a drunkard or a criminal. Not that my thoughts were very coherent. It had been a rather dull party, with the champagne more stimulating that the conversation, so that my mind was buzzing like a motor engine that is pulling nothing, except for one incident when a fashionable doctor made an outrageous reference to Carol, my poor dead, mad mother, who had been his patient. I shall not repeat it, at any rate not yet, as although the incident may be true, it is not necessarily credible, and I do not want to give at the outset an impression that I am not telling the truth. Nor shall I give my retort, which was brief, impersonal and very restrained, but which shocked the millionaires and their wives as much as if I had used an obscene word, because of its reference to a standard of values of which they did not seem to have heard.

At last I left the highway, and roared up the hill, where my grandfather many years earlier had driven his four-in-hand and blown his coaching horn. I passed the smart new gate of burns the dairy farmer, and came to my own, which was removed from its posts, one of which was knocked askew, while the gate itself, old and weather-stained, leaned against the stump of a fallen tree. At this height I was above the rain and I could see only too clearly, as I bumped up the stony drive, the general disorder of this property which I had inherited from my mother year ago, and which it would take at least another two years to put straight. The naked white branches of the trees, broken and hanging at strange cubist angles, were illuminated eerily by the head-lights, white tangles of blackberries and fallen fencing made my back ache at the thought that even if I could find labourers, the heaviest and dirtiest jobs would still be left to me.

I drove through the tall brick gate-posts, from which the gates had also gone, into the stable year, and left the car in the dilapidated coach house. My Labrador retriever raced from the house, like a lion roaring after its prey, and leapt against me with such force that my foot slipped on a cobble and I fell over. He put his foot on my shirtfront and joyfully licked my ear. I put my arm round the soft golden neck of this noble and beautiful creature, partly to lift myself up, but also to embrace him, for nowadays when we are hardened to endure so many evil things, the sight of the innocent melts and disarms us. My dog seemed to me a higher order of creation that the fashionable doctor, or than the smart lady who sniggered at the tale of Carol delirious, and wandering lost in the back passages of a hospital. With the superb integrity of animals he decided his demonstration was adequate, and drew away until I stood up, when proudly waving the banner of his tail, he led me into the house.

As I moved through the long shadowy hallway of my house I examined the pictures hanging along the wall. It startled me; the hungry generations had at last trodden into oblivion, my grandfather, whose forceful and highly coloured personality, even after his death had dominated the scenes of my earliest childhood.

I opened the door to our bedroom to find Janine there asleep – post argument. I didn't feel like lying down next to her in bed to console like I usually did after an argument, which admittedly was quite often. Instead I went to my computer to check my email. There was one person that I did feel like talking to at this moment.

xxx

They had started emailing each other regularly again, it was something about these two – they were only okay when they had each other.

xxx

**Letter No:** Fifteen  
**Date: **December 22nd

_Finn, _

_I started singing again today. You were right; I can feel myself coming back. Slightly._

_Do you ever think about that time we drove from Ohio to California? I drove you nuts with my singing every song that came on the radio, but you still let me. _

_How are things down at the property? I never imagined you living on a farm._

_- Rachel_

**Letter No:** Sixteen  
**Date: **December 22nd

_Rachel,_

_You have no idea the feeling it gives me to think of you singing. Sometimes I hear you melodic voice inside my head, I guess you've never really left me. _

_I don't know if I'm going to be able to fix the farm Rach .It reminds me so much of my mother. I could use your support right now. Janine is almost a stranger to me now._

_- Finn_

_P.S. Merry Christmas_

xxx

She didn't think Finn could ever need support from her as much as she needed it from him. The idea of Finn needing her support changed something inside of her. This was the first time she admitted she loved him –really loved him.

xxx

**Letter No:** Nineteen  
**Date: **January 2nd

_Happy New Year Finn!_

_Maybe the New Year will bring us both a new light. _

_I have to admit something to you. If I don't do it now I don't know if I ever will. Before I tell you I need you to promise it won't change anything between us._

**Letter No:** Twenty  
**Date: **January 2nd

_I promise. _

**Letter No:** Twenty-one  
**Date: **January 2nd

_I love you. _

_As a woman loves a man._

_As a hero loves a heroin._

_I cannot not control it, I yearn to be with you. _

_I know this is not a likely hood. But could it ever be?_

xxx

He didn't respond. Not because he didn't love her, but because he did. The feelings were mutual. He would be with her if ever she asked, but he couldn't let that happen. They weren't good for each other. And what of this stranger he called his wife? She was not amongst the thoughts in Finn's mind as he read Rachel's words.

xxx

**Letter No:** Twenty-two  
**Date: **January 8th

_Where are you Finn? You promised me._

_- Rachel_

**Letter No:** Twenty-three  
**Date: **January 12th

_Finn, I miss you._

**Letter No:** Twenty-four  
**Date: **January 20th

_Just forget what I said it doesn't matter. If it never happens let that be, but your friendship means more to me than anything anymore. _

_Please. I need you. _

xxx

But Finn didn't respond. Rachel stopped singing again.

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**E.**


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